2025

Here are all the books I read in 2025:

January 2025

• Bust Hell Wide Open: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
• Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor
• The Passage of Power, by Robert Caro

February 2025

• Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, by Werner Elert
• Glory Days: Stories, by Simon Rich
• Master of Reality, by John Darnielle
• The Girl in Blue, by P. G. Wodehouse

March 2025

• The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius
• Whalefall, by Daniel Kraus
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

April 2025

• High Bias, by Marc Masters
• Walkman, by Michael Robbins
• The Large Catechism, by Martin Luther

May 2025

• The Technological Society, by Jacques Ellul
• The Hot Rock, by Donald E. Westlake
• Quack This Way, by David Foster Wallace and Bryan Garner
• Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson

June 2025

• A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
• Free Range Chickens, by Simon Rich
• Muybridge, by Guy Delisle
• No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
• DNF: Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu
• Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, by Étienne Gilson

July 2025

• A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken

August 2025

• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan
• Gates of Fire, by Stephen Pressfield

September 2025

• Beowulf, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Genesis and the Mystery Confucius Couldn't Solve, by Ethel R. Nelson and Richard E. Broadberry
• 7 Steps to Midnight, by Richard Matheson
• Bea Wolf, by Zach Wienersmith and Boulet
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins
• Culpability, by Bruce Holsinger

October 2025

• Moonbound, by Robin Sloan
• Antigone, by Sophocles
• Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris
• The Steal Like an Artist Audio Trilogy, by Austin Kleon (3 book)

November 2025

• Dissolution, by Nicholas Binge
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders
• The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace

December 2025

• Discordia, by Max Barry
• Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein
• I. Asimov, by Isaac Asimov
• The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, by Philip and Carol Zaleski

Summary:

44 total books: 10 audio, 34 print; 25 fiction, 18 non-fiction, and 1 poetry. Several of these were hybrids of print and audio.

I started the year with a resolution to read 30 pages a day. This held for a while, and I finished some longer books. I ended last year by making a spreadsheet detailing which books I wanted to read in 2025. I used this (with some deviations) for about half the year. At a certain point, I stopped being so disciplined. It’s hard not to keep buying books and wanting to read the new ones.

Next year, I have some exercise and health goals, and some habits that need to change. I don’t think I can achieve them without changing my morning routine pretty aggressively. Therefore, in 2026, I am not planning to read in the mornings, unless it’s an audiobook while I’m exercising. I am making reading less of a priority as I try to get in better shape. I expect this to be a difficult transition, so we’ll see if I’m still able to read as much next year.